Evaluation of Second Grade, Set Six

• Bible -- We completed the lessons in Searching for Treasure. K. has really enjoyed these lessons and I think we will have fun reviewing with the board game in the next set.
• Math -- K. has a good grip on her addition and subtraction facts. She really enjoys the map book and wants to work in it more than once a week. Her multiplication and division facts are coming along fine.
• Reading -- K. reads well, and is really very good about stopping when she comes to a word that she does not know the definition and asking about it. Sometimes I tell her and sometimes we look it up in the dictionary.
• Grammar -- I know K. is learning and understanding the concepts because she brings them up at other times.
• Fine Arts -- K. likes to play the piano by ear, but is learning about the notes. She is enjoying the sewing projects.
• Writing -- K. enjoys most of the projects and games we play.
• Spelling -- K. is doing well with alphabetizing and dictionary skills. Her spelling is good.
• Science -- K. has enjoyed the experiments. Yesterday we were on a hike and part of it went up a hill. The trail zig-zagged back and forth. I asked her what she noticed about the trail. She was able to tell me it was a ramp and the zig-zag made it easier to climb.
• History -- The other day I came upon K. telling her aunt about Louis XIV and his palace.

Evaluation of Second Grade, Set Five

• Bible -- K. is doing well with her memorization and comprehension of our discussions.
• Math -- K. remembers more and is better at the things we are studying each time we "visit" them.
• Reading -- because K. reads on her own, enjoys reading, and reads well, I try to keep reading a fun time, concentrating more on comprehension and pronunciation than reading.
• Grammar -- we are finishing the book report and report on penguins during our weeks between set five and set six.
• Fine Arts -- K. is enjoying the art projects. We did the Paint to Music one during our weeks off. She is also becoming more interested in playing the piano.
• Writing -- K. enjoyed the writing projects we did in this set. She really likes it when we write stories together.
• Spelling -- her overall spelling is becoming better, and she seems to be more aware that words should be spelled correctly -- she is asking more often how to spell words she doesn't know how to spell.
• Science -- I think my attempt to keep the experiments fun in this set was successful. She does say she is tired of experiments, and wants to learn about animals again, but she enjoys the experiments, too. (Lesson for me: Don't plan a whole year of one type of science.)
• History -- we are getting into a time period where there are more books written for K.'s age and comprehension, so it is easier. We borrowed the movie, Felicity: An American Girl Adventure and watched it. Then I showed her the series of books. She is quite excited to read them.

Evaluation of Second Grade, Set Four

• Bible -- we have had lots of good discussions. I'm very pleased with K.'s growth in character and understanding.
• Math -- K. is doing very well with knowing the addition and subtraction math facts. When adding she renames with ease, but sometimes forgets to add the number she carried. She can add problems with three addends up to the ten thousands place. Subtraction is coming along well.
• Reading -- K. has started reading longer books on her own, and not just ones that I've already read to her. We did our own reading program this summer. She earned 25¢ for every book she read that she hadn't read before, and that I had not read to her. She caught on to the idea of propaganda, and will bring up the subject sometimes when she sees an ad or commercial.
• Grammar -- I'm pleased with her knowledge of the parts of speech we have studied. We finished reading all the books she has on penguins during our week off.
• Writing -- K. starts the writing projects well, but doesn't usually want to spend more than one day on a project. This is something to work on.
• Spelling -- she is doing well in spelling, and is learning to complete the work page on her own.
• Fine Arts -- K. has lost interest in crocheting, so we have put that on the back shelf, but we are really enjoying doing art projects.
• Science -- K. really enjoys science when she can complete the experiments. Sometimes in my enthusiasm I include some that are too difficult for her -- but I'm learning to keep it simple!
• History -- we covered a lot of topics in these weeks, but she is understanding it and enjoys me reading to her.

Evaluation of Second Grade, Set Three

• Bible -- We are doing well completing the work. I just need to remember to keep Bible about a relationship with God and not something to be completed.
• Math -- K. is grasping the concepts well. She does very well with her addition and subtraction math family facts. Learning by playing games and doing activities is a lot of fun, but sometimes challenging to come up with ideas.
• Reading -- K. does very well sounding out words. She was reading a coloring book about the Statue of Liberty this morning and sounding out 'enshrined' and ' successive' and 'centennial' and 'exposition'. Her comprehension is at a good level, but I'm glad we have the book Reading Corner to help develop this area.
• Grammar -- I was very pleased with K.'s listening skills. She is doing well with sentence structure and punctuation. She is getting better (or maybe it is my approach) about assigned writing -- like the shape poem and senses chart. Her dictionary skills are only hampered by her desire to stop and look at the pictures on every page.
• Writing -- I'm so glad I found Writing Hangups. The projects are fun, but make her think, and work a bit. K.'s interest in cursive writing comes and goes, so I'm glad I am only planning on doing the activities this year, keeping the actual learning to write cursive until third grade.
• Spelling -- after some "encouragement", K. has started writing her spelling test very neatly.
• Fine Arts -- I really, really like My Art Book. We did another project this last week. It is a collage and we had lots of fun with it.
• Science -- what a fun time we had learning about air. There were so many experiments and books to read that was hard to pick.
• History -- it is good to be able to find plenty of books that are K.'s level to read to her.

Evaluation of Second Grade, Set Two

• Bible -- this subject is working very well. K. really enjoys singing hymns. I wondered if we would enjoy reading God and a Boy since it was our third time. It was just as good and exciting this time! K. enjoys the books in the Trailblazers series. We are on schedule with our Bible memory and catechism. Searching for Treasure is more enjoyable and takes less time than I had thought.
• Math -- we are having so much fun with math and K. is learning so much! It does take quite a bit of time to prepare. But it is well worth the time investment! I had divided the fact family triangles into three groups instead of five groups. That way we can cover all of them practicing them three days a week.
• Reading -- K. understood sequence of events before we started, so it was mostly fun review. We are enjoying the book Story Train.
• Grammar -- this is another subject that takes time to find ways to teach the concepts without  using worksheets too much, but it makes our time more enjoyable.
• Writing -- I'm so glad I found Writing Hangups. These writing projects are just what K. needs.
• Spelling -- K. is learning the spelling words great.
• Fine Arts -- I have to be careful to keep this subject enjoyable. Sometimes I need to ignore my plans and just paint or color read poetry with her.
• Science -- WOW! I didn't know we were going to have so much fun this year! The hardest thing for me is to keep to simple experiments that K. can participate in and understand.
• History -- here is another subject where I need to be flexible and ready to change my plans to keep it interesting for K.

Evaluation of Second Grade, Set One

• Bible -- K. did very well memorizing the Ten Commandments. A funny thing is that the children were memorizing them in Sunday School at the same time. She is enjoying singing the hymns and listening to the books. Our study on wisdom is going much better than I expected.
• Math -- K. is doing well with her math facts. We are having fun learning with games and activities.
• Grammar -- I am pleased with K.'s grasp of the concepts. She seems to really remember them.
• Spelling -- so far this is a really easy subject for K. Because she has been writing on her own for a few years, she has learned how to spell most of the words in her spelling lessons.
• Reading -- We really enjoyed the book. It was a good introduction for our history studies this year. The comprehension activities were a lot of fun.
• Writing -- I'm not sure we will be using The Magic Pencil very much. She does not seem excited about the projects. We still enjoy the activities in Games for Writing.
• History -- sometimes I'm not sure if K. is paying attention to what I'm reading to her, but when I ask her questions, she can talk about the events of the book with me.
• Science -- experiments are a big hit. This is going to be a fun year!
• Fine Arts -- we got off to a good start with three aspects: sewing, crocheting, and piano. The museum we visited was a big disappointment, so I have requested some books from the library to use and we are keeping our eyes open when we go other places. For instance, there were some paintings on display at the library, so we were able to talk about which was a still life and which was a landscape.

Evaluation of Set Seven

• Bible -- K. has learned concepts and memorized verses. I'm glad it is time for our winter break so we can really work on putting these things into practice. We sang Standing on the Promises in church last Sunday and she was poking me and smiling really big while she sang.
• Writing -- we really had a lot of fun with the games and activities we played during this set. It was a good to do this.
• Spelling -- K. is becoming more aware of spelling correctly when she writes her stories.
• Grammar -- reviewing the parts of speech was fun, and she understands them. Using the workbook for writing the novel was at times frustrating because she just wanted to write a story, but once she understood what we were doing, it became a lot of fun. I'm quite sure we will be doing this every year.
• Reading -- K. is doing very well in reading. She can read anything put before her and sounds out words she doesn't recognize. Using Reading Corner has given us something to do besides read and answer questions.
• Math -- I think K. had made the biggest improvement in math this year and we gave her a certificate and ribbon for her effort. She has made the connection between repeated addition and multiplication and knows her math facts well.
• History -- This has been a fun period of history to study. K. understands why the compass, gunpowder, and the printing press were so important.
• Science -- K. really enjoyed learning about the desert. I'm not sure why it was more interesting to her than some of the other habitats, but it was.
• Fine Arts -- we didn't do anything with composers, but she has learned to play Old MacDonald had a Farm.

Evaluation of Set Six

• Bible -- we are enjoying reading Joel. I really think K. is learning to be a better friend. I can observe that she is putting the lessons into practice watching and listening to her conversations with playmates during park days. She still asks when she can see her kiss.
• Writing -- we did get the "Laura Ingalls Board Game" finished and we have played it once. It was fun. K. enjoys writing stories, so a few times during this set of weeks my plans were preempted because she wanted to continue writing a story. I don't think that is a bad thing.
• Spelling -- K. is doing really well with her spelling, dictionary skills, etc. I need to do better with keeping track of miscellaneous words that K. misspells in her writing so I can add them to her regular spelling words.
• Grammar -- capital letters are frustrating me. K. knows the rules, but doesn't practice them. She will write a whole story without any capitals, or she'll put them in the middle of words, or random words will be capitalized. I am quite sure this is happening because she is concentrating more on what she is writing than "the rules" because if I ask her to "check your capitals" she will go back and make the corrections. So right now, I'm trying not to make a huge issue of capital letters because I'd rather her enjoy writing and make mistakes than do everything correct and hate writing.
• Reading -- K. has learned the concept of "main idea" well. We were talking about something the other day and she said, "Oh, like the main idea." Yes, it is.
• Math -- K. is doing so much better with "the triangles" (fact families). Reducing the number to 11 a day, and having the timer set for 2 minutes, with the reward of a sticker did the trick. Now she is trying to get through each day's triangles before the timer changes from "2" to "1".
• History -- this set of weeks went well because I planned out which pages to cover each day in the books I wanted to read to her. I need that level of accountability. Some days we read more because it was interesting.
• Science -- I planned which pages of what books to read each day, so that went really well. K. enjoys doing food chains.

Evaluation of Set Five

• Bible -- we completed learning Luke 2:1-20 and Kimmi earned her $2 for saying it perfectly, without any helps. We went ahead and finished Little Pilgrim's Progress and will start another book with Set 6.
• Writing -- K. seems tired of the books we were using and so I'm changing things up a bit so we are again working together.
• Spelling -- K. is doing well with her spelling words.
• Grammar -- we had fun learning the parts of a book and playing games to review nouns.
• Reading -- K. enjoyed reading The History of Flight. Next year I think we will read more of this type of book.
• Math -- we got away from playing games and math became a bit boring, so we will be getting playing more games in this next set of weeks.
• History -- we really enjoyed reading Ivanhoe and Robin Hood.
• Science -- we were able to use some of the information we learned about rivers and lakes when during our vacation.
• Fine Arts -- K. is enjoying listening to the music cd's

Evaluation of Set Four

• Bible -- K. is doing really well learning the verses and sometimes catches me saying the wrong words since I am re-learning them from the KJV. I am continually amazed at how God weaves things together. The topics "I planned" for each set of weeks last winter in 24 Ways or the Friendship book seem to be exactly what what we are needing to discuss now.
• Writing -- while K. still enjoys drawing from the Draw Write Now book, she seems a bit bored with the writing, so I'm keeping it for drawing and using more games for writing.
• Spelling -- using the magnetic letters on the fridge for reviewing spelling has been a great way to reduce the "are we done yet" attitude.
• Grammar -- the activities and books about prepositions were great, and through the mad libs, I am sure K. knows the difference between action, naming, and describing words.
• Reading -- our Friday games help keep things fun. Since K. reads well, and loves to read to herself, I keep the number of pages for "Reading" short.
• Math -- K. is catching on well to the new addition facts. She seems to have grasped the concept of even and odd numbers. She understands which number is greater or less, but we need more work on using the symbols and reading the math sentence.
• History -- K. is enjoying this period of history. Our castle still isn't completed, but we will work on it some more this next set of weeks.
• Science -- I wasn't sure how much K. would enjoy My Side of the Mountain, but we took our time with it and talked about it, and now that we have finished it, I saw her reading it the other day.
• Fine Arts -- I've started keeping the cd's in the car -- it's a good place for listening.

Evaluation of Set Three

• Bible -- this set we really have fun learning our verses. We made up some actions to go with the verses. I've been able to refer back to our Little Pilgrim's Progress story regarding things going on in her/our lives. Monday we had to go to a hospital I hadn't been to before. I was told the cross streets and basic directions. In the car, K. spontaneously began praying that we wouldn't get lost -- and we didn't! When we go to the park, she will say to me, "Help me remember to be a good friend." So we review the things we have learned in the Friendship book.
• Writing -- I've decided that working on one project for five weeks, isn't our 'cup of tea'. K. enjoys drawing the animals, and since we were doing ocean animals this last set, and we have already learned about the ocean, she added her own backgrounds with lots of different sea creatures we had learned about.
• Spelling -- K. is doing great with spelling, but I've got to remember to ask her a few times during the week how to spell the two additional words (that she misspells in in writing). She enjoys these occasional worksheets and is learning how to do crosswords and word searches.
• Grammar -- the books from the library about Antonyms, Synonyms, Similies, Onomatopoeia, and Adjectives really made this set of weeks fun, interesting, and lively. Through these books, games we played, and the occasional worksheet, K. has a great grasp on these concepts.
• Reading -- Mondays continue to be for silent reading. We are also working on pronouncing words completely and correctly. For instance, make sure the t's in 'little' get pronounced, etc.
• Math -- although she prefers addition, K. has gotten well acquainted with the subtraction side during this set. She seems to be starting to picture the equations in her head instead of using manipulatives all the time.
• History -- the crafts/activities we did this set were fun. It is getting easier to find books that are on her level for this time period, which is nice. K. likes to act out the things we read, so I've been trying to incorporate that into our day, also.
• Science -- we got our issue of Nature Friend this week. K. was looking through it and came running to me, "Look, Mom, a tarsier!" She also wants me to make up stories about jaguars and poison dart frogs, and she talks about bromeliads, so I know learning is happening.
• Fine Arts --  We are staying with one biography and one story book about each composer, but I try to pick up a few cds of their music. I've been putting classical music cds on a various times.

Evaluation of Set Two

• Bible -- everything is checked off, but more importantly, K. is learning her verses, we are praying, and learning about living in such a way that we are a joy to God.
• Writing -- K. continues to show bit of improvement with her drawings. I am making her fix capitalization errors in her handwriting exercises since we have learned some capitalization rules.
• Spelling -- there have been few words in the lessons that K. hasn't already known how to spell. She seems to enjoy the challenge of leaning to spell the two additional words, and has learned each very well.
• Grammar -- K. can fix the capitalization mistakes on worksheets, but forgets about them when she is writing, so we are working on that. She really understands the "commas in a series", and will show me examples she finds when she is reading.
• Reading -- we have assigned Mondays as "Silent Reading Day". This helps me to know that she understands what she is reading, since we don't talk about the story as she reads it, but I ask her a lot of questions when she is done.
• Math -- K. has gotten very good on the addition facts up to 6 + 6. She enjoys doing the triangles, and can do them quite quickly, but every once in a while her mind wanders. I'll wait a bit and if she doesn't give the answer I just say her name to bring her back.
• History -- K. enjoys listening to me read. She also likes to act out some of the stories. Every so often when we are talking she will say something that lets me know she really is paying attention. Sometimes she will play while I read, and sometimes she will sit by me. She has even caught a mistake I made: I said "places" instead of "palaces".
• Science -- K. really enjoyed learning about the ocean. The Magic School Bus books were a great way to learn more. We did so much reading that in the last couple weeks we didn't do much in her notebook, but we did get 10 animals and the food chain done.
• Fine Arts -- K. enjoyed listening to Mozart's music. I didn't try to read so many books about the composer this time. Just one biography and one story book. I was glad to find a cd that she enjoyed listening to.

Evaluation of Set One

It is hard to believe that we are one-seventh of the way through first grade! The weeks went really smoothly and I'm satisfied with the progress we made.

• Bible -- we completed everything on our schedule and K. has earned her 50¢ for memorizing Psalm 1
• Writing -- we completed our lessons in Draw Write Now, but didn't get the Draw What You See done; the schedule didn't allow for 2 games/activities in weeks three and five because we don't have Writing on Wednesdays; comparing K.'s first and third drawings, I see some improvement
• Spelling -- K. has known how to spell all the words so far; it is interesting to me that she really likes the dictation sentence, and will ask for more than one
• Grammar -- I believe K. has a good grasp of prefixes, suffixes, and compound words; she enjoys playing the syllable games on Learning Games for Kids; she easily picks out action words from a list
• Reading -- K. is reading smoothly and her comprehension is good; last year she really needed a book mark to stay on one line, but this year she isn't using a book mark and is doing fine; she enjoys discovering new words, their meaning, and adding them to our list
• Math -- K. understands addition and subtraction; we found a game on-line that really helped with her understanding of fractions; I discovered math books at the library -- not text books, but interesting books that cover one subject, like symmetry, fractions, patterns, and estimating
• We normally get into church early and play an "I Spy" game of things in the sanctuary. This morning I turned it into a shapes game: rectangle solid (piano), cylinder (drums), sphere (lights), rectangle (screen), etc.
• History -- in history we are mostly reading books; she really enjoyed the stories of pirates; Pangur Ban by Stolz wasn't interesting to her, but I finished reading it myself; she was intrigued by the fancy first letter of each chapter, so we were able to talk about the illustrating that the monks did
• Science -- we really had a lot of fun learning about the Arctic and Antarctic; we didn't do anything with natural disasters or make a mural, but I am very satisfied with what we covered and how much she has retained
• We play a "Guessing" game at odd times (in the car, doing her hair, at the table, etc.). To play, one person give three clues (sand, waves, bathing suit) and the other person tries to guess what the first person is thinking about (beach). I have started throwing in rounds that have to do with science (and history). Here is an example: Arctic, ice floes, seals = polar bears
• Fine Arts -- we read several books about J. S. Bach and listened to a cd of his music several times